Iraq PM: US forces must stay for now
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-06-24 09:47

The U.S.-led multinational force must stay in Iraq until Iraqi forces are fully prepared to defend the country by themselves, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said Thursday.

Setting of a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces would be a sign of weakness, he said. "The country would be open to increased terrorist activity," he said at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Ahead of his White House meeting Friday with President Bush, al-Jaafari said Iraq's insurgency consisted of a "very, very limited minority" of people.

Iraq's Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari (R) is greeted by Deputy U.S. Chief of Protocol Jeff Eubank as he arrives at the West Wing of the White House for closed meetings with National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Vice President Dick Cheney in Washington, DC June 23, 2005. Al-Jaafari will meet U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday. [Reuters]

Where once there were 12 to 14 incidents of terrorism a day, the number has fallen, he contended. Yet on Capitol Hill on Thursday, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East said the insurgency is as active as six months ago and that more foreign fighters are flowing in all the time.

The prime minister said Iraqi forces are "increasingly taking the lead" in operations and that Iraqis are providing useful information about who the terrorists are and where they are.

U.S. deaths have surpassed 1,700 since the war began in March 2003, and an Associated Press-Ipsos poll this month found just 41 percent of adults supported Bush's handling of the war — the lowest that figure has been.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari speaks to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington on Thursday, June 23, 2005.[AP]

Bush has said that would not be wise and that any U.S. pullback should not be taken until U.S. goals are achieved.

During his presentation at the council, al-Jaafari raised his voice in response to a question from a correspondent from the Qatar-based Arabic network Al-Jazeera about Iraq's decision to shut down the network's Baghdad operation.

"Why are only the negative aspects of Iraq aired on TV?" al-Jaafari asked, referring to Al-Jazeera. "Iraqis hugely oppose Al-Jazeera."

He said the network has yet to make any reference to the mass graves that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein left behind as a legacy of his decades-long rule.

Al-Jaafari later went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to visit U.S. troops wounded in Iraq.

Earlier in the day, the prime minister predicted that an Iraqi constitution to guide his country toward democracy would be drafted by the end of August and then ratified in a popular referendum.

"We are going to do it within two months," Ibrahim al-Jaafari said while examining the U.S. Constitution at the National Archives.

Asked if Iraq's would be approved in the fall by Iraqis, he replied, "Yes."

Looking ahead to the session with Bush, al-Jafaari said he would express his gratitude for Bush's support in helping to shape a new Iraq.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Bush would talk with al-Jaafari about "the progress that's being made on the political front and the security front. It's also an opportunity to talk about the challenges that lie ahead."

A history buff, al-Jafaari has a special interest in John Quincy Adams, the sixth U.S. president.

At the end of an hourlong tour of the archives, al-Jafaari received copies of Adams' letter of appointment in 1797 as U.S. ambassador to Prussia; his message to Congress in 1825 calling for a national university and an observatory; and a facsimile of a statement Adams made as a House member in the 1830s opposing efforts to sidetrack anti-slavery petitions.

The closest the tour came to touching on the mounting loss of American and Iraqi lives in postwar Iraq was a copy of a letter that the first President Bush wrote his children before sending U.S. troops to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's annexation in the 1990 Gulf war.

"I want you to know, as a father, how every life is precious," Bush wrote.

Archivist Allan Weinstein did not overlook smudges in America's past.

He showed al-Jaafari a video of the police blotter that recorded the arrest of the Watergate burglars and the tape recorder used by Rose Mary Woods, who was President Nixon's secretary.

"We can gain from this experience," al-Jaafari said of America's wide and sometimes bumpy historical experience. "Our history is very deep, too. This allows the American people to see their own history, bad things and good things."

Late Thursday evening, al-Jaafari visited patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for about 35 minutes. He spoke with soldiers, including those in the amputee ward, who were injured during wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wives, children and parents of some soldiers were present, but reporters were excluded.

"The American nation should indeed be proud of its sons and daughters who have worked hard, who have fought hard for the best values of liberation and democracy in Iraq," he told reporters afterward. "I would like to say to these patients that these sacrifices have not gone in vain."